Winter

Expand

IIIFView PDF

Winter

Artist Wendy Red Star American, Crow, born 1981

Date2006

DimensionsWith Border: 23 × 26 in. (58.4 × 66 cm)
Image: 21 × 24 in. (53.3 × 61 cm)

MediumArchival pigment print on Sunset fiber rag

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LineGift of Dr. Loren G. Lipson

Object number

2019.13B

Not on View

Published ReferencesNottage, James H., ed., Art Quantum: The Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, 2009, Indianapolis, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, in association with University of Washington Press, pp. 81-87, repr. (col.) pp. 88-85.

Label TextWendy Red Star explains, “I work across disciplines to explore the intersections of Native American ideologies and colonialist structures, both historically and in contemporary society.” Her work is informed by her experience growing up on the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation in Montana, as she confronts stereotypes about Native Americans while deploying symbols drawn from powwow and reservation culture. In each of four highly staged and choreographed photographs in the Four Seasons series Red Star, dressed in traditional Crow garb, inserts herself into a faux seasonal landscape decorated with materials such as plastic flora and fauna and cardboard cutouts of animals. The visual references range from the once widely popular diorama displays in natural history and anthropological museums to panoramic images of the Western landscape commercially produced in the 1970s. She draws attention to mainstream American culture’s tendency to create one-dimensional narratives and stereotypes in relationship to Native American experiences, past and present. Utilizing imagery that is at once familiar and absurd, Four Seasons poses critical questions about the complexity underlying Native American identities and agency over representation. For Indian Summer, rather than depicting the summer, Red Star leans into a questionable colloquial term referring to a period of unseasonably warm temperatures in the fall. There is no clear origin of this term and opinions vary about its use, but it points to the broader issues around certain normalized language that is disrespectful if not harmful to Native Americans.